SOCIAL/CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE U. S. SINCE 1877
Special Topic: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and Historical Change
HIST 493/593
FALL semester, 2000
Day/Time: Wed, 12:05-2:35
Location:
Professor: Dr. TJ Boisseau
Office: 217 OLIN, Hours: Tues/Thurs 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm and by appt.
Phone: x6277
Email: tjboiss@uakron.edu
Course objectives:
The primary objectives of this course are to expose students to topics and themes in U.S. popular culture of the last century, and to train them in the historical analysis of popular culture. Students will become familiar with the questions and methodologies employed by cultural historians and with the theories of culture and social change such historians commonly draw from. Students will learn to view U. S. popular culture in historical perspective and in terms of the racial, gendered, and class meanings attached to or generated by such texts/phenomena as novels, films, sports events, dance, slang, jokes, television programs, music, consumer habits, etc. The goal of such analysis is to make students of U.S. history more fully aware of the complexities of American culture in the past and thus better able to assess their own positioning vis a vis American popular culture in the present moment.
Undergraduate Required Texts:
T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace
Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization
Owen Wister, The Virginian
Jack London, Call of the Wild
Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Course Reader [R]
Required Graduate Supplementary Texts:
Richard Slotkin,
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
Graduate Reader [GR]
Assignments and Evaluation:
General: Attendance at all class meetings is mandatory and will count towards students' course grade. Lateness to class or in submission of assignments will not be tolerated. Thorough and timely reading of course materials as well as serious, active and focused participation in class discussion is expected. Commitment to achieving course goals should be apparent throughout the semester.
Course journal: The primary written assignment for this course consists of a journal of student impressions and reactions to the reading. Journal entries each week should consist of a minimum of two typewritten, double-spaced pages. Although students will submit journals in their entirety for final evaluation on November 29th, journal entries may be collected at any point(s) in the semester for spontaneous review by instructor. With this in mind, students should always bring their journal entries with them to each class. Course points will be deducted in cases where journals collected during the semester are found to be incomplete. (Up to 3 points may be deducted from course grade for each journal entry found to be missing or inadequate.) Journals, in their final submission form, should consist of a minimum of 24 type-written double-spaced pages referencing readings for all units.
Final essay and presentation: Students will be required to submit a final essay comparing a historically-significant or revealing popular phenomena/text with a contemporary parallel in terms of their racial, gendered, or classed meanings. Final essays should be approximately 7-10 typewritten, double-spaced pages in length and must reference explicitly at least three readings assigned during the semester. Final essays are due December 6th. Class presentations of final essays will be held on December 6th.
Notice to graduate students: For graduate credit, students must expand the final essay as described above to include more explicit discussion of cultural theory and historical change, using Veblen's theory of the leisure class as an organizing theme. In order to fully accomplish this task, graduate students should seek out and consult additional secondary works that offer useful interpretations or evaluations of Veblen's work. Rough drafts and presentations of graduate final essays are due on Dec. 6th; polished graduate final essays, consisting of approximately 15 double-spaced typewritten pages, may be submitted anytime prior to Dec. 13th.
Evaluation Summary:
Attendance …………………………………………………
(13 meetings x 3) = 39
Course journal ……………………………………………...
(12 entries x 3) = 36
Final essay ……………………………………………………………………..
20
Final presentation ……………………………………………………………….
5
100
Reminder: Regardless of total points earned, course failure may result from neglect of any one of the following 4 course requirements: consistent attendance, submission of satisfactory course journal, final essay and presentation.
Additional class policies
Plagiarism: The presentation of statements or ideas as one's own that have been culled from others' works (whether published or unpublished) will not be tolerated. University guidelines will be followed in prosecution of cases of suspected plagiarism.
Withdrawals from course must be requested prior to the 10th week of classes, in accordance with departmental policy.
Incompletes will be granted only in cases of unexpected crises, when students have already completed at least 80% of the coursework required to pass this course..
Class schedule:
Aug 30 Introduction to course
Unit I: Men, the City, and Civilization, 1880-1910
Graduate supplemental reading: Richard Slotkin, xxxx
Sept. 6 The neurasthenic impulse and the exotic
Lears, No Place of Grace, pp.
Torgovnick, excerpt from Gone Primitive, pp. [R]
Kolodny, "Letting Go Our Grand Obsessions," pp. 1-18.
[R]
Sept 13 Fighters in the ring and on the range
Townsend, excerpt from Manhood at Harvard, pp. 97-120, 256-86 [R]
Wister, The Virginian
Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, pp.
Unit II Women and Modernity, 1900-1930
Graduate supplementary reading: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class
Sept 20 Girls on the town
Peiss, Cheap Amusements, pp.
Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Sept 27 The modern gal? Meet Mrs. Consumer
Mattelart, "Everyday Life," 23-35 [R]
Johnson, "As Housewives we are Worms," 475-91 [R]
Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman," 188-207 [R]
Sparke, excerpt from As Long as its Pink, pp. 73-119 [R]
Jhally, "Advertising as Religion," 217-229 [R]
Lears, "Sherwood Anderson: Looking for the white spot," 13-37
[R]
Oct 4 The movie moderns
Felski
Ryan
Valentino
Mae West
Unit III Normal Relations: Family, Community and Society in Cold War
America
Graduate supplementary readings: Morris, "Banality in Cultural Studies,"
14-43 [GR]
Adorno and Horkheimer, "The Culture Industry," 29-43 [GR]
Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,"
407-23 [GR]
Oct 11 Family
Westbrook, "Fighting for the American family,"
195-221 [R]
Nadel, "Appearance, Containment and Atomic Power," 13-37
[R]
Modleski, "The Incredible Shrinking He( r ) man," 90-111
[R]
Oct 18 Community
Spigel, "Television in the Family Circle," 73-97 [R]
Eagan, "Our Town in Cold War America," 62-70 [R]
Gendron, "Theodor Adorno Meets the Cadillacs," 18-36 [R]
Oct 25 Society
Biskind, "Pods and Blobs," 101-159 [R]
Nadel, "The Invasion of Postmodernism," 157-203 [R]
Unit IV Figuring the Nation: American Identity in the "Me"
Decades
Graduate supplement: Stacey, "Desperately Seeking Difference,"
259-74 [GR]
Angus, "Media Beyond Representation," 333-346 [GR]
Gitlin, "Postmodernism: Roots and Politics," 347-60 [GR]
Nov 2 What's news?
Ryan and Kellner, excerpt from Camera Politica, 106-135 [R]
Morse, "The Television News Personality and Credibility,"55-79
[R]
Tuchman, "Representation and the News Narrative," 331-44 [R]
Naison, "Sports and the American Empire," 499-515 [R]
Nov 8 Life at the mall
Morse, "An Ontology of Everyday Distraction," 193-222 [R]
Morris, "Things to do with Shopping Centres," 295-319 [R]
Squire, "Empowering Women? The Oprah Winfrey Show," 98-113
[R]
Nov 15 Reliving Vietnam, Revisiting the Cold War
Derian, "The Importance of Shredding in Earnest," 230-39 [R]
Jeffords, excerpts from The Remasculinization of America, 1-22, 168-86
[R]
Weber, "Lights, Camera,… Reagan," 58-81 [R]
Nov 22 Student conferences
Unit V The Other Within: The Racial Politics of Our Lives
Nov 29 One nation under a groove
Rose, "Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile," 300-17 [R]
Awkward, "A Slave to the Rythm," 175-192 [R]
bell hooks, "Stylish Nihilism," 155-164 [R]
di Leonardo, "White Lies, Black Myths" [R]
Dec 6 Class presentations